Etro / Fall 2013 RTW

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Various definitions of what it means—and what it looks like—to dress a woman to her strengths have been proffered in the last few weeks. There’s the mysterious noir woman-on-the-verge offered by Miuccia Prada; the youthful street glamour of Christopher Kane’s ideal; and the moody, glittery romantic presented by Marc Jacobs back in New York. On Friday, Veronica Etro revealed her interpretation. “It’s not very much about prettiness,” she said backstage. “It’s more about being tough and strong and dressing as a way of protecting yourself.” Armor, not amore.

And so the clothes she created for fall carried a sense of structure and urbanity. Zippers ran wild—or, rather, very, very straight—along the long sleeves of loose silk dresses, across big square pockets on minimalist coats, and down the backs of the ankles on slim pants (all of which, of course, were printed with the house’s signature kaleidoscopic patterns). Anything characteristically feminine, like the long purple paisley evening dress, was toughened up with a leather motorcycle jacket. You may have thought that it had finally gone to biker heaven, but Etro offered a classicist and slightly oversize approach. (Also, a quick glimpse of Milan’s moto-jammed streets reminds you it’s as much a practical piece here as a fashionable one.) The designer also played with sharp 3D texture on baseball jackets and added stand-up fur-lined collars to cool wool vests and coats with cut-away layers.

Underscoring this tough biker-chick motif was the models’ hair, slicked back à la The Matrix or as if they were perpetually speeding down the highway—steering the motorcycle, to be sure, not riding on the back.